Did U.S. Have to Drop Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

President Harry S. Trumandefended his decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as the only way to avoid a full-scale invasion of Japan. That, arguably, would have cost more lives, American and Japanese, than the approximately 200,000 who died in the two atomic attacks.

Critics have contended that the Japanese were sending signals that they were prepared to surrender, but that these were either missed or ignored, and that the United States wanted to demonstrate to the world — and particularly to the Soviet Union — the awesome power it had at its disposal.

This became a question when historians learned that the Soviet Union's declaration of war on Japan was regarded by leading Japanese officials, perhaps including Hirohito, as a catastrophe sufficient in itself to require Japan's surrender. Of course, Truman and our government had no way of knowing that. You can only assess decisions on the basis of what the decision-makers knew (or thought they knew, which is where most mistakes come in) at the time.

By today's standard, there's no way to defend the actions of Roosevelt, or certainly Washington/Jefferson.

But, does Truman deserve the same treatment? If we cast Truman's decision as wrong, or even evil, aren't we looking at the word as how we wish it were, and not how it was, and may even be in the future?

There was a substantial group within the Japanese military who rejected surrender even after the bombs were dropped. Junior officers tried to kidnap the Emperor to prevent his statement to the nation choosing surrender. But there was also a substantial group within the government looking for a way out before the bombs were dropped. Their hope was Russian mediation. When Stalin declared war, as he had promised to at Yalta, that game was up and that faction of the Japanese government began to consider surrender as an option. Included persons close to Hirohito.
This is all very academic. Given the facts before him, Truman made the only decision he could have.

I don't mind questioning history and the decisions made, even if questioning means the answer remains the same. The only way you learn anything is to truly pick it apart and study it. That's what all of that dissecting of animals was about in science class.

Regardless of the right/wrong aspect in dropping the bomb, it forever removed us from the moral high ground of ever being able to deny anyone else the weapon --- without sounding like the USH (United States of Hypocrites) we are. 70 years after it was first dropped, we remain the ONLY nation ever to use it against another people. Scoreboard still reads, God Bless America 2, Evil Empire 0, Rest of the World 0.

And I think Truman starting the Cold War in 1947 caused far more damage, over generations, than his dropping of the bomb.

I don't mind questioning history and the decisions made, even if questioning means the answer remains the same. The only way you learn anything is to truly pick it apart and study it. That's what all of that dissecting of animals was about in science class.

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True, but I wish we'd stop analyzing history from the position that it's possible to wage a completely sanitized war.

In an impossibly complex war, it is entirely possible, if not likely, that any decision can be both correct and horrifically amoral.

Regardless of the right/wrong aspect in dropping the bomb, it forever removed us from the moral high ground of ever being able to deny anyone else the weapon --- without sounding like the USH (United States of Hypocrites) we are. 70 years after it was first dropped, we remain the ONLY nation ever to use it against another people. Scoreboard still reads, God Bless America 2, Evil Empire 0, Rest of the World 0.

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Rest of the World, 0? Yeah, America's dropping of the bombs and saving millions of lives on both sides really left the Rest of the World defeated for eternity.

If you've got the time to slog through it, I highly recommend Richard Rhodes' The Making of the Atomic Bomb. He makes an interesting point that, in the use of the A-bomb, the U.S. (sort of) made its further use unthinkable. There was a thread about WWII deaths earlier this year that sort of led to the same inference.